Alabama, Utah become the latest U.S. states to ban TikTok

Alabama and Utah on Monday joined other U.S. states prohibiting the use of Chinese-owned short-video sharing app TikTok on state government devices and computer networks due to national security concerns.
The actions follow warnings from FBI Director Chris Wray last month who said the Chinese government could use the ByteDance-owned app to control data collection on millions of U.S. users or control the recommendation algorithm, which could be used for influence operations.
Alabama Governor Kay Ivey said in a statement, “Disturbingly, TikTok harvests vast amounts of data, much of which has no legitimate connection to the app’s supposed purpose of video sharing. Use of TikTok involving state IT infrastructure thus creates an unacceptable vulnerability to Chinese infiltration operations.”
Her directive also orders executive branch agencies to take all necessary steps to prevent TikTok from accessing sensitive state data.